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Crisis on Earth-X Dropped A Funny Spider-Man Reference

Spider-Man gets a mention in 'Crisis on Earth X'. Ever since the first season of The Flash the Arrowverse has had an annual crossover each November. Every year, as more shows have been added to the shared universe, the story gets bigger and grander. Trying to top last year's three episode 'Invasion' story that brought Supergirl into the mix for the first time is 'Crisis on Earth X', where the various heroes meet their evil counterparts from a parallel world where the Nazis won World War II.

All of the Arrowverse shows make frequent references to each other and to other DC Comics properties. It's not uncommon for Bruce Wayne or Hal Jordan Easter Eggs to slip into conversation or be represented through a prop or location. Recently Legends of Tomorrow brought Helen of Troy to Wonder Woman's home of Themyscira to learn the ways of the Amazons. And the crossovers certainly have a history of these sorts of references as well, such as last year when Ray Palmer noticed that Kara looks like his cousin, in reference to Brandon Routh having played Clark/Superman in Superman Returns.

In this year's crossover it is not only DC being honored by these references, but Marvel as well. During the first part of 'Crisis on Earth-X' Marvel hero Spider-Man got a pretty big name drop from a couple of the characters.

One of the ongoing stories this season on Legends of Tomorrow has of course been the breaking up of Firestorm. In order to explain the exit of Martin Stein, the characters have been working for weeks on a way to give all the Firestorm powers to Jax so he can remain on the Waverider, and so the two characters don't have to interact every few days for survival. During 'Crisis on Earth-X' a few of their old friends from S.T.A.R. Labs try to help, but at least for now the problem still remains.

When Cisco and Harry come up with a way to remove the power of Firestorm from both of them, Stein is elated to be finally going home to his wife, daughter, and grandchild. But Jax is unhappy, probably over the potential loss of his powers. When Stein offers to give him new powers through a virus that will change Jax's DNA and give him spider-based powers, Jax thinks Martin plans to make him like Spider-Man - only to learn that he will get one power from the spider, not several like the Marvel character. That one power is the power of stickiness. Basically, Martin plans on making Jax super sticky. Clearly, the plan has some kinks to be worked out.

Not that this is the only recent reference to Spider-Man in the Arrowverse. Last week on The Flash, Barry claimed that Clifford DeVoe made his 'spider sense' tingle, one of the powers that Spider-Man has - but Jax apparently would not if he allows Martin to change his DNA.